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Friday, January 27, 2012

A Personal Check List for Fiction Writers

Today we welcome a new third-Friday regular to the blog - Debby Harris who last visited us here. Welcome aboard, Debby!

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I’m an Honorary Lecturer for the School of English at the Scottish University of St. Andrews (a town probably better known outside of Scotland as the historic Home of Golf). Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of providing editorial support for two Ph.D. candidates in Creative Writing. To help them evaluate their own work during the writing process, I prepared a check-list of practical questions for fiction writers to ask themselves. This check list has since proven so useful to me as a tool for editorial assessment/self-assessment that it seems churlish to keep it to myself.

So here it is:

A) Plot

1) Does the work feature a strong/striking central idea around which the action of the plot revolves?

2) Is the central concept sufficiently robust to be conveyed in 25 words or fewer?

3) Does the action reflect an artful balance between incident and exposition?

4) Do plots and sub-plots advance logically, evincing a chain of cause and effect underlying the course of events?

5) Are individual incidents and episodes well-conceived and well-orchestrated?

B) Characterisation1) Do the principal characters evince personal and emotional depth, eliciting sympathy or antipathy according to their roles?

2) Is character interaction dramatic and dynamic, contributing to the development of exposition, plot and theme?

3) Is the dialogue lively and natural?

4) Do characters behave self-consistently with respect to their age, social and educational background, experience and temperament?

5) Within the framework of dialogue, is the register of diction appropriate to the respective characters and the work’s intended audience?

C) Setting and Atmosphere

1) Is the setting well-established in terms of time and place by means of descriptive imagery and selective detailing?

2) Have the back-story elements been artfully accounted for in terms of background research and character profiling?

3) Are atmosphere and mood effectively generated by means of evocative language?

4) Do setting and atmosphere enhance plot action and character tensions?

5) Do setting and atmosphere contribute meaningfully to thematic development?

D) The Writer’s Craft

1) Is exposition handled adroitly, via a variety of techniques?

2) Does point of view function artfully for the conveyance of story?

3) Is the angle of vision manipulated effectively to influence the reader’s perceptions, emotional affinities, and thematic evaluations?

4) Are scenes artfully “staged” with the aid of props and choreography of action?

5) Does the work throughout exhibit a polished command of diction, syntax, and the ornaments of language?

In my experience, these questions, answered honestly, can help you locate any areas of potential weakness in your work. (Incidentally, it’s also a useful tool whenever you’re out to critique any work of fiction that comes your way.)

Cheers!

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Debby Harris is an independent editor living in Scotland. Please visit her website for more information about her editing services and fees.

Welcome, Debby. Your list is quite complete - the only item I might personally include, based on recent experience, would be avoidance of writer intrusion. For the first time in my years of editing, this became a serious issue with a writer whose intrusive commentary proved a major distraction in the story.

Hi Debby,This is a good, thorough list. It does have some subjectivity to it--words such as "effectively" and "polished" may be difficult for the most honest writer to decide for sure. Even so, these are important questions to ask oneself.